


Trouble Shared

by Alona



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Banter, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-27 21:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12591376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: Kujen has a plan, but that's beside the point.





	Trouble Shared

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tonepoem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonepoem/gifts).



Jedao had been listening in silence, if not with growing dread, certainly with growing paranoia. He had been stockpiling commentary, beginning with _That is an unbelievably stupid plan_ , moving on to _No wonder you're so sure you need me_ , and steadily descending to marginally more helpful reflections. But when Kujen finally finished speaking, all Jedao said was, "There has to be more to it than that." 

Because, of course, it was literally unbelievable that it would be that stupid. If nothing else, Kujen would have made provisions for himself to survive anything going wrong. 

Kujen shrugged noncommittally. "That's all of it you need to know, and don't tell me you can't work under these conditions." 

"Was that going to be a Kel joke or a commentary on Shuos protocol?" Jedao asked rhetorically. Given that it was Kujen, a fresh attempt at a compliment was also an option. "Anyway, if you wanted us to spend more time together, you could have just said so. I would've understood." 

One of these days he was going to work how to make Kujen angry on purpose. That was always a useful thing to know about a person, especially one you had to deal with so intimately. Until then, Jedao was stuck blindly striking out and getting lucky – or unlucky, as circumstances dictated. 

This attempt had no effect whatsoever. 

"All right," Kujen said, "I do want us to spend more time together. We're going to be stuck with each other for a very long time, if you get your way, and despite some evidence of compatibility, I can't say for sure whether we're going to enjoy that. People should see each other at their best and worst before deciding they're ready for eternity. Now, it's easy enough for you, Jedao," he added graciously, "since I really only have a worst, but I do have to consider myself." 

Besides dovetailing a little too neatly with Jedao's thoughts, this bit of repartee didn't admit of any answer that wouldn't play right into Kujen's hands. Jedao didn't want to do any more of that than was strictly necessary. "Granted," he said, "but that still doesn't explain why I should care that the Rahal have these old files of yours." 

"First, it's not the Rahal, it's one particular magistrate who's spent the last two decades or so making a nuisance of herself. Second, well, I could waste time explaining it to you, but we do have more interesting things to talk about." One of these more interesting things, as Jedao had every reason to know after having heard about it at length, was exactly what Kujen had done to the researcher who had helped smuggle the information out. "But let's say it would give her and her coterie an edge over me that I would find inconvenient, and while we're at it let's also say that I don't like letting these things go." 

None of which was actually an answer to Jedao's specific question, but it looked like that just wasn't on the table. 

"I'm with you so far. But I could pull it off alone." 

"Really?" Kujen said blandly. "I'm not convinced you'd be able to recognize the right thing if you saw it. There are some advanced concepts involved." 

_Speaking of eternity,_ Jedao thought, _how long before you get tired of that one?_ He was fairly sure he already knew the answer, though. 

"As long as I'm infiltrating a Rahal station anyway, I'm sure I could find someone to explain it to me." He'd probably have to kill them afterwards, of course, but it wasn't like Kujen getting directly involved was going to do anything to decrease the body count. And that wasn't even his main objection to Kujen's involvement. "But _that_ would put a damper on that sort of thing." He pointed meaningfully at Kujen's dimly fluttering shadow. 

"Oh, come on," said Kujen, "that's what's worrying you? You've been on Rahal stations, surely. The kind of natural lighting that flatters the complexion, and that even the Kel won't do without for its psychological benefits, is just too much creature comfort for wolves to handle. No shadows. Or none that anyone would notice in the infinitesimal moments they tore themselves away from contemplating calendrical mysteries. And are you a fox or aren't you? The shadow doesn't matter if no one sees you." 

"You've been watching too many dramas," Jedao complained half-heartedly. The trouble with Kujen's lack of interest in a Shuos infiltrator's realistic capabilities was twofold. First, he was probably right to dismiss realism where Jedao specifically was concerned; second, Kujen's own approach to subterfuge seemed to consist entirely in being smarter than everyone around him, and so unnerving he rendered any opponent incapable of stringing together a coherent thought. Admittedly, there were worse approaches. "And I know you're doing this because you want a sneak peek into my brain." 

"So?"

"So how do I know you won't do any permanent damage?"

"Well, I have been doing this for a very long time. I'm sort of good at it." Kujen appeared to relent. "All my regular anchors," he explained, "undergo a great deal of processing before they're up for it. In the short-term, you'll be fine. I've done a few test runs, of course. You don't imagine I'd risk your brain?"

Jedao said, "I don't think I have a very clear grasp on exactly what you'd risk." 

There was an almost audible snap in the room as Kujen lost his patience with the pretense at debate. "Let me put this plainly," he said. "You don't have a choice, Jedao." 

_I own you,_ he meant. The subtext was glaringly present. Whatever precautions he was taking to preserve Jedao's brain, it was all in the interests of keeping his prize possession in good order. It was unnerving how he never felt the need to say it. For all his protestations that he'd be just as deep in shit as Jedao if the other heptarchs got wind of their plot, there was no illusion of an equal distribution of power between the two of them. 

"Of course, Nirai-zho, and I wasn't thinking of refusing. I was only doing my duty by you. It would be irresponsible to let this move forward without making sure all the kinks were worked out." 

Kujen did not look mollified. "That's a nice piece of bullshit," he said.

Jedao shrugged. 

Kujen continued: "Now that that's settled, we can get down to details. I doubt you'll enjoy being an anchor, but fortunately for both of us it'll be a very temporary arrangement. I'll fill you in on anything you need to know as we go along. For now…" 

It wasn't that he didn't have everything needed to mount what was really a straightforward operation. It was that he clearly had no interest in giving it more than the bare minimum of thought. Equally clearly, he wanted to put Jedao through his paces while having a front-row seat for himself. 

When he had imparted all the information he had, he added, "Oh, and Jedao?"

 _What else can there be?_ Jedao wondered. "Yes?"

"It would probably be neater if you didn't leave any bodies behind." 

Surprising, and almost offensive. "I'll try my best," Jedao said. 

"Oh, don't try that hard." That was more in character. Kujen's grin was unambiguous: killing someone was perhaps not an ideal circumstance, but it was by no means discouraged, either. 

"Whatever you want," Jedao said. Then he made one last attempt to introduce sense into the proceedings: "Really, though – the tech support ruse?"

Kujen had dropped all pretense of interest in the actual plan part of the plan. He had opened a door and was beckoning Jedao through it in the least reassuring manner possible. Over his shoulder, he said, "It'll work." 

 

"I can't believe that worked," Jedao said tonelessly. The tightness in his voice might have come from the difficulty he was having piloting the moth with the wrong set of reflexes. He had already as much as admitted he was surprised any of Kujen's anchors could walk in a straight line, never mind display fine motor control. Kujen had chosen to let that go, for now. Time enough to show off fine motor control when this was over. 

To tell the truth, Kujen wasn't finding the experiment nearly as entertaining as he had expected. Putting Jedao off balance (literally, at first, and he'd certainly enjoyed that) had its uses, but hours of watching the man blandly not voicing all the criticism running through his head was making teeth Kujen hadn't had in centuries itch. 

"Of course it worked," Kujen snapped. "I've been sending innocuous techs here for years, just in case. They're used to it." 

"That was prescient of you, Nirai-zho." 

No hint of a complaint about having information withheld from him. Jedao didn't even sound _surprised._ Bastard. 

Jedao docked the moth with a minimum of fuss, and Kujen, who did appreciate things done well, left him to it. They had no trouble with the station. It was largely automated and too stupid to register anything about Jedao except that he had the right clearance. Not that an actual human being would have posed much more of an obstacle, in all likelihood. Recognizing Kel generals, even ones as noteworthy as Jedao, just wasn't a standard feature in a Rahal. 

"All right," Kujen said, "let's go over and take care of the problem for them – " easy enough to do, when it was Kujen's dormant virus that had caused it in the first place " – and then I'll let you handle the rest." 

"The rest" started with poking around in the grid, in case that worked. Jedao, with Kujen's advice (whether he chose to acknowledge it or not) hacked into it quickly, for all the good it did them. The information they wanted was somewhere more secure. Next came getting access to the hidden parts of the station's layout and plotting a course for the magistrate's suite of rooms. The terminals there would be a better bet. Anyway, she was exactly the kind of frustratingly thorough person who would store hardcopy backups of everything. That was part of why Kujen had gone for this admittedly convoluted scheme, instead of just letting his bugs take down the station's whole system. What were the Rahal going to do, declare him a heretic? 

Jedao, after a couple of minutes' study, looked up from the layout and announced that he had worked it out. He traced the path he had chosen with a fingertip. 

"What, no crawling through pipes?"

Patiently, Jedao explained, "There are more comfortable ways of getting around. Besides, there are at least a few innocent reasons for being in a rarely used corridor, and none at all for banging around in the ventilation system." Jedao did love to lecture. Probably better for almost everyone if the Kel had taken him as an instructor, but their loss was Kujen's gain. Most of the time. 

"Remember the subvocals," Kujen said, with the irritating suspicion that Jedao had left him that opening on purpose. 

Jedao fed the security system a loop. Then, with an unerring instinct that was the next thing to spooky, he located a cache of spare robes (marked simply "miscellaneous" on the layout) and pulled one on. He didn't blend in all the same, at least from Kujen's biased perspective, but presumably he knew what he was doing. It was almost too bad that Jedao's rarely used corridors turned out in fact to be deserted: it would have been fun watching him pretend to be a wolf. 

There was a focused, distant look in Jedao's eyes, about as close to contentment as Kujen had ever seen there. This was familiar, even comforting, territory for him. 

There never was anything to look at on a Rahal station. Besides the dullness of the light he had already brought up to Jedao, there was an almost total absence of art, and no attempt at changing up the basic, essential architecture of a station. 

"Pick up anything else interesting from the grid?" Kujen asked eventually. 

"Schedules, mostly, especially for anyone likely to be using those rooms. Of course we aren't going to run into the magistrate herself – I've confirmed she's been called away on your manufactured emergency – but I'll have to find somewhere to hole up for an hour or two while some underlings finish up a policy meeting." 

"Thrilling."

"You never know," Jedao said easily. "Policy meeting might be code for whatever unsupervised Rahal get up to. Also, I looked up what other moths are docked here, and other alternative exits." 

That might have been worrying, except that if things got that bad, Kujen had his exit strategy planned out. Jedao presumably assumed as much. 

"Did you catch anything worthwhile?" Jedao asked. 

"Nothing much." Actually, Kujen had given into the spirit of the thing enough to have been keeping a lookout. Not that he was about to mention that to Jedao. 

The suite was child's play to get into. The rooms were laid out so each room led into the next, without intervening halls. Presumably this reflected some tenet of the ancient order that had become the Rahal. At the moment, it was just one more nuisance. Jedao tried out one unsatisfactory hiding place before finding one that suited him: a tiny office within earshot of the room where the policy meeting was being held. Jedao ignored the desk and took a seat on the floor with his back to a wall. He produced a jeng-zai deck and began a sequence of tricks. 

"Having fun?" he asked. 

"Not really, no." Kujen considered the best way to use the time stretching in front of them. "So do you ever take a real vacation, or do you spend all your leave keeping your hand in the spying and assassinating business?"

"It may not have occurred to you," said Jedao, "but once people know you've been an assassin, they expect you to leap at the chance for an encore. Kel as much as anyone."

That was just what Kujen had found out from a perusal of highly classified files about Jedao's off-duty activities. 

He came in close and spoke at Jedao's ear: "Do you mind it?"

With glacial calm, methodically working at his cards, Jedao answered, "I don't mind anything." 

Presumably this was even true, on some level. 

The policy meeting, or cabal, or orgy, or whatever it was, let out ahead of schedule. Jedao listened politely to Kujen's account of what was happening in the corridor, and once they were both certain no one else was around, he made for the magistrate's office. 

By Rahal standards, it was almost gaudy: a triptych of scrolls with abstract linework on one wall; a desk made of real wood, with snarling wolves' heads for feet. It was still meticulously clean and smoothed down, enough that Jedao took some time about finding the terminal, which was flush with the wall. Naturally it was at eye level, and naturally you had to stand to use it. 

He went back to the desk and pulled out all the drawers. Then he went back to the terminal. He didn't actually suggest that Kujen could look around the drawers to see if anything was likely to be what they wanted, but it was clear he was getting the hang of how anchoring worked. There was time to fix that later. 

"I doubt it'll be here," Kujen said. 

"It wouldn't be that easy," Jedao agreed. Then, with a short, breathy laugh, he said, "Oh, logic puzzles. That's just great." 

"What, really?" Kujen went over to look and was met with the introduction to a logic puzzle against a neutral gray background. The interface was so bare it was offensive. "And they say Nirai are strange." 

"No comment," Jedao muttered between his teeth. He seemed to be looking around the room for inspiration. 

Kujen decided to leave him to it. If you couldn't trust a pet Shuos to handle something like this for you, then really, what was the point? He had a more thorough look at the papers. If there had been anything tempting in there he'd have asked Jedao to pull it out for him to get a closer look, but really, it looked like it was mostly for show. The interesting stuff must have been kept elsewhere. 

He heard Jedao say, "Oh, of course," and launch himself at the puzzle. In moments he was through. Kujen also looked around the room, and then he said, "The hangings, right. That's a bit obvious, isn't it?"

"Some people think their minds are just unknowable to lesser beings. They're usually wrong. So, what am I looking for?"

"There's no need for you to worry about it." 

He hadn't been planning on watching Jedao fumble around. Kujen wasn't eager to do any more possessing than absolutely necessary, but he had a wide definition of necessity (such as: it would be annoying not to). He had the files he wanted in a couple of minutes – the organizational structure was a continuation of the logic puzzle that gave access to the system, and even he knew that was a sloppy way to handle your security – and then he had them destroyed. There were a few other things to take care of, and they didn't take long, either. Then he found a reference to where the hardcopies were kept. 

He left that open on the screen and returned control of Jedao's body to him. 

Jedao gave an almost noiseless gasp. He tried a couple of times to speak, which apparently gave him enough time to collect himself. At least, in Kujen's opinion, "What the _fuck_ was that?" was a great deal milder than anything the circumstances actually merited. 

"Just a short-cut," Kujen said cheerfully. The whole thing had lasted only a few minutes. His regular anchors were altered to be resilient under possession, but it was a strenuous process. He wasn't about to risk damaging Jedao. 

"Right," Jedao said. "Are we done here, then?" He flexed his hands – he was wearing the plain black gloves that went with his Nirai disguise, and it seemed to give him a moment's pause to see them there. Then he set about clearing any traces of their passage through the system. 

The file room was through a set of increasingly smaller offices leading off the magistrate's office. The system was simple enough for them to locate the right file on a first try. Jedao removed it – it was a thick stack, heavily bound – and said, "That's it then." It vanished into the folds of his stolen robes. 

At some point Kujen had noticed the figure watching Jedao from the doorway – no actual doors in this part of the station, presumably because it was far enough from any vacuum-touching external walls that no one was worried about a breach. Normally Kujen would have expected Jedao to have noticed already, but he hadn't said anything, even subvocally. Maybe the brief possession had shaken him. Or maybe he thought he'd be able to handle it. 

With the file stowed, Jedao turned and met the watcher's eyes squarely. "Is there something interesting on my back?" he asked, in the calmest possible manner. 

The watcher, a tallish man who looked as though he never smiled, said, "I have a team on the way. We'll find out who sent you." 

"Yeah, that doesn't really work for me," Jedao said. He was already in motion as he said it. 

Kujen had never seen any reason to make a close study of violence, so he wasn't really able to follow what Jedao did next. It was very fast and surprisingly quiet, and it ended with the watcher dead on the floor. Jedao arranged him so he might plausibly have fallen dead of natural causes – which probably wouldn't stand up to examination, but you had to admire the effort – and set off at a measure but hurried pace. 

"That was impressive," Kujen said, with unintended emotion. It had been _very_ impressive. 

Businesslike, Jedao said, "Kujen, would it be beneath you to tell me if you see that team coming up ahead of us?" 

"He might have been bluffing." 

"Of course he could." 

And the team might break into song and give Jedao a medal. Yes. But at any rate, they didn't run into anyone and got back to the moth without interference. 

"Glad that's over," Kujen remarked, once they were safely away from the station. Safely, because at the outset Jedao had place a timed spike to take down the station's defenses. 

"It's not over yet," Jedao said tensely. 

Which was true enough. 

 

The really annoying thing, Jedao thought, was that he couldn't tell if there was anything missing. He knew there had to be. No way would Kujen hand him an advantage like that much intimate knowledge of the black cradle's workings. But it was all very clear and linear in his mind. He was worrying at his memories without getting anywhere, and eventually he was just going to have to stop and analyze what he had. His body was responding correctly, at least. Bleed-through, Kujen had said, obviously delighted watching Jedao trip over his feet. It was just gone now. Even the memory was less visceral than he would have expected. 

He was trying, at the same time, to pull together the relief he ought to have felt at being freed of Kujen's presence. Maybe it would be easier if he weren't literally in bed with the man. 

(Or, well: with Kujen's regular anchor, who may or may not have enjoyed his fleeting vacation; unless there wasn't anything there left to enjoy. There was always the chance that the "processing" for long-term anchors Kujen had mentioned produced convenient empty shells. At the moment, that was perhaps the least unpleasant spin to put on it, and didn't that just say everything about Jedao's position.)

Incidentally…

"Stop that," he said, making a fending motion. 

Kujen was ruffling up and smoothing down the hair at the back of Jedao's head with careful, mechanical precision, over and over, more nervous tic than caress. It was beginning to conjure some pretty morbid imagery in Jedao's mind: being picked over by carrion beetles, for example, or lying in a shallow pool of shifting water. Being dead, either way. 

"You're jumpy," Kujen remarked. His fingers froze, gripping the nape of Jedao's neck. 

"I just carried out one of the sloppiest operations of my career, directly opposed to the interests of a rival faction known for being humorless, and you seem to have mistaken it all for the height of foreplay." 

"Fuck's sake," Kujen said, with galling mildness. There was a rustle and dip of bedsheets suggesting he was sitting up. 

For a vertiginous moment, Jedao found himself involuntarily contemplating an indefinitely prolonged future at Kujen's side. If they didn't manage to murder each other with conversational frustration after the first century, it simply couldn't be done. 

Still in the same light tone, Kujen went on: "Don't you ever get tired of whining? You think you have problems now, just wait until you're trying to run the heptarchate." 

Jedao refused to bite. He had his own thoughts about taking a leadership role in the event that their long con actually paid off – the win scenario, abbreviated, ran: _I'm dead and it's someone else's problem._ \-- but it wouldn't have helped matters to share those thoughts with Kujen. 

"When we get there, I promise not to whine when you say I told you so." 

"How magnanimous." Kujen's voice was dry and unfriendly and crackling with tension. Easy concessions from Jedao tended to do that to him. So that was getting somewhere. "Look at me." 

Jedao half rolled over, propped himself on his elbow, and looked. 

Kujen was on him in an instant, pressing him down into the bed. He gazed avidly down at Jedao with someone else's beautiful eyes. His eyes. 

And his hands, stilling even the ghost of protest with a touch to Jedao's lips before finding other occupation. 

Something was off: before, Jedao had always sensed that sex was just a headgame thing for Kujen. He'd reacted with ambivalence to the occasional unavoidable signs that Jedao was actually enjoying himself during their liaisons. Something about their outing must have really gotten him in the mood. 

"And what makes you say that?" Kujen asked. 

At this point Jedao understood that he'd voiced that last thought aloud without meaning to. Which was a fairly colossal error. He was going to have to be much more careful. 

Just now that was going to be a problem.


End file.
